BE YOUR OWN SPELL CHECKER

I know what you’re thinking.

What, you didn’t know I’m a mind reader? Among my numerous abilities…

You’re thinking, why should I check my spelling when the computer will do it for me? Why, it’ll even check my grammar for me. True, true, but you know what?

Computers don’t catch everything. Sometimes what they think is a grammar mistake isn’t. Or maybe you want to write badly, on purpose. That’s a writing style, FYI. You might want a character who writes bad sentences and makes lots of mistakes. Just so long as the rest of your narrative isn’t peppered with mistakes, that’s ok!

Pepper?

And you know what else? There ain’t gonna be no spell checker on your handwritten exam. Or essay or story or whatnot. Spell checker’s gonna be your teacher, that’s what.

And as far as I know, there isn’t yet a handheld scanner that you can hold over a handwritten piece of work that will tell you which words you have misspelt and where you have made odious grammar errors.

Relying on a computer or a teacher to be our spell checker makes us lazy. We won’t improve our spelling or our style much.

Too lazy to proofread

Not everyone likes to proofread. I’m not sure why. My older kids can’t be bothered (they are currently aged 12 and almost 15 respectively, in case you’re wondering). My youngest is just starting to read and write so I can’t ask her to proofread yet.

I’ll tell you what. If you’re a perfectionist like me, you’ll proofread your work to death. Because if anyone caught a mistake, it would simply be mortifying. Agree? If you’re not a perfectionist, you might not know what I’m going on about.

But here’s the thing. Your a writer or an aspiring writer which is someone who wishes to be a writer, or hopes to be a proper writer one day, to wear the badge of “writer” with pride instead of with a blush.

And to get there, you’re going to have to edit your work like mad. You’ll have to write and re-write and cut parts out that halt the flow of the story and add other parts to explain obscure points that weren’t clear in anybody’s head but yours and…

You’ll have to add commas too.

Or skip them to make a point, pulling your reader along at the pace that you set.

And then the big day comes. Drumroll please.

You want to enter your story - short or long, fiction or non-fiction, good or bad (but hopefully great) – to a magazine or story publisher. If you haven’t been in the habit of editing your own work, your story will end up on the slush pile in about 5 seconds. Typo within the first few lines? Garbage. Mixed up your idioms? Garbage. Use of staccato sentences or a Plain Jane style? Garbage again.

Wow, that was a sad story.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Start editing today. Be your own spell checker. Like I said from the onset.

P.S. I left a typo in this blog post on purpose. Write me in the comments and tell me if you found it. And I don’t mean “ain’t” and “gonna”. Those were on purpose.

There’s a nip in the air, clouds are starting to look like cauldrons and witches, and your family is planning pumpkin a dozen different ways.

Coming next month: Falling Into Fall – a 12-lesson, themed bundle about autumn. Look for it soon!